Democratic Procedures in CCP’s Cadre Selection Process: Implementation and Consequences

Forthcoming in The China Quarterly Qingjie Zeng1

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has inaugurated a series of measures to allow more Party members to participate in the cadre selection process. “Intra-party democracy” was promoted as a remedy to the corruption and social tension that resulted from overly concentrated personnel power. How effective are these formal procedures in constraining the appointment power of core Party leaders and institutionalizing the influence of a larger group of cadres? Drawing on archival research, interviews and quantitative data, this paper examines two components of intra-party democratic reform: the practices of “democratic recommendation” that serve as a gateway to cadre promotion and the semi-competitive elections at Party congresses. This in-depth study finds that theefforts to expand bottom-up participation are hindered by loopholes in formal regulations, informal practices and the frequent rotation of Party officials. Meanwhile, the reform measures have brought changes to the personnel system by complicating the Party secretaries’ exercise of appointment powerand altering the incentives of ambitious cadres. The implementation of intra-party democracy could improve the vitality of one-party rule, and its ebbs and flows imply a dividewithin China’s top leadership over the direction of political change.

Key words: Cadre selection, core Party leaders, intra-party democracy, democratic recommendation, party congressional election.

1 Qingjie Zeng, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan. Email: qingjie@umich.edu. Phone number: 6464686075. Address: 2228 Glencoe Hills Drive #12, Ann Arbor, 48108.

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I. Introduction

Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power in 1949, it has confronted two crises that brought into question the very survival of the party state: the CulturalRevolution and the Tiananmen Incident. In the aftermath of both upheavals, the CCP emphasized intra-party democracy asan important part of its reform program to avert the fate of collapse. Intra-party democracy has been seen by the CCPleaders as a way to inject vitality into the Party and ameliorate the many ills associated with overly concentrated power. Party intellectuals and outside observers have both suggested that democratic practices within the Party could set the stage for broader political reform.2

Intra-party democracy (IPD), defined as “an institutionwhereby all party members can participate in party affairs directly or indirectly on an equal basis”,3 consists of multiple institutional components. One element of IPD concerns how CCP leaders at various levels are selected. Rather than having a small number of Party leaders, especially the Party secretary, monopolize the power to select officials, IPD entails more expansive participation in the selection process by Party members. To a large extent, the decision to broaden bottom-up participation wasa response to the corruption and social tension that flowedfrom the concentration of personnel power. How effective are these formal procedures in constraining the appointmentpower of core Party leaders and institutionalizing the influence of a larger group of cadres? To answer this question, I focus on two components of IPD reforms: the practice of “democratic recommendation” (minzhu tuijian 民民民民) that serves as a gateway to the promotion of cadres and the semi-competitive elections at Party congresses. These aspects of IPD have received little

2 Shambaugh 2008, 121; He 2006, 207; Li 2009.3 He 2006, 194.

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attention in the existing literature of China’s democratic reform, which has largely focused on village elections and the experiments of township elections. While these grassroots reforms provide exciting signs of democratization in China, their impacts are highly limited as they are carried out at the lowest rung of the hierarchyand often restricted to pilot projects in specific locales.By comparison, the IPD measures under study here, although more incremental in nature, are implemented throughout the Party hierarchy and have systemwide significance. Drawing on archival research, interviews with local officials and systematic appointment data, this paper aims to arrive at an accurate assessment of the Party’s IPD reforms in the area of cadre selection. I argue that the efforts to promote bottom-up participation are hindered by loopholes in formal regulations, informal practices and thefrequent rotation of Party officials. Despite these obstacles, IPD reform in this area has complicated the Party secretaries’ exercise of personnel power and restructured the incentives of ambitious cadres. I suggest that IPD reform could potentially enhance the stability andviability of one-party rule, and the Party leadership’s evolving emphasis on such reform provides an indicator of the influence of liberal forces within the CCP. The paper will be organized as follows. Section II presents a simplified, ideal-typical model of the CCP’s one-level-down appointment system. It also explains how corruption and social tension induced by the system have led to IPD reforms aimed at opening the selection process to more players. The next two sections will examine the implementation of democratic recommendation and congressional semi-competitive elections, respectively. In doing so, the analysis seeks to shed light on the changes that these reform measures have brought to the CCP’s selection process. The final section summarizes the findings and discusses the larger political implications ofIPD institutions.

II. The CCP’s appointment system and its discontent

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It is a defining feature of the Leninist political system that the ruling party monopolizes the power of appointing office-holders in all public institutions. A growing body of literature has identified the personnel system as the linchpin of the CCP’s political control and its success with decentralized authoritarianism.4 To understand the origins and significance of the Party’s IPD reforms, one has to explore the intricacies of the regime’spersonnel system, namely, the way personnel power was distributed both across different levels of the Party hierarchy and between different players at the same level. China’s bureaucratic system consists of five administrative levels: the center, the province, the prefecture, the county and the township. At each level, thelocus of political power lies in the Party committee and its standing committee. To illustrate the operation of personnel power in this multilayered bureaucracy, Figure 1 presents a simplified, ideal-typical model that depicts theessential dynamics of the CCP’s personnel system. (Figure1 here)

In this figure, cell A represents the core Party leaders at a particular administrative level. The “core Party leaders”, a central concept of this article, can be roughly equated with the members of the CCP’s standing committee.5 In some cases, however, power is so concentrated in the hands of the Party secretary that the influence of other standing committee members pales in comparison. Cell B represents the organization department (OD), an agency that specializes in assisting the core

4 For example, see Manion 1985; Burns 1989, 1994; Lam and Chan 1996; Chan 2004; Landry 2008. 5 The size of the Party’s standing committee varies across administrative levels. The number of standing committee members ranges from 5-9 at the central level, 10-15 at the provincial level, 9-11 at the city level, to 7-9 at the county level. The Party committee at the township level, which has 5-9 members, is too small to warrant a standing committee.

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Party leaders in the domain of personnel management. All the standard procedures associated with nomination, evaluation, appointment and dismissal are carried out by the OD. Cells C and D represent the major leaders at the next lower level. These include the core leaders of variousfunctional departments (C) and the territorial jurisdictions one level down (D). Since the mid-1980s, the CCP has adopted the principle of one-level downward cadre management. In practice, this meant that A, with the staff support of B, has the authority to appoint C and D with little interference from Party leaders one level above A. As one scholar summarized,“the shift to one-rank-down system meant that leaders in provincial and lower territorial units gained almost complete control over appointments and dismissals of officials within their territorial jurisdiction”.6

Initially, this arrangement was designed to grant localleaders sufficient autonomy to promote socioeconomic development. As a consequence, the CCP’s personnel system has evolved into one in which the Party secretary, in consultation with his close colleagues, monopolizes the making of appointment decisions.7 The concentration of personnel power has created ample room for the core Party leaders to engage in faction-building, nepotism and even outright office-selling.8 These “unhealthy tendencies” (bu zheng zhi feng 民民民民), an umbrella phrase used in the CCP’s discourse to describe personnel practices that go against the principle of transparency and fairness, have become a major source of popular discontent and social tension that the CCP’s leadership cannot afford to ignore. Irregular personnel practices that trigger popular outrage usually take one of the following forms. First, Party leaders are often accused of promoting their relatives and close associates, typically in violation of existing rules such as the law of avoidance and step-by-

6 Lieberthal 2004, 236.7 Fewsmith 2006, 3.8 For an in-depth account of how concentration of power led to corrupt personnel practices, see Zhu 2008.

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step promotion.9 Also drawing heated criticism is the promotion of “cadres with sickness (dai bing ti ba 民民民民)”, referring to those who moved up in the bureaucratic ladder despite previous engagement in corrupt activities. Such phenomenon is invariably caused by the failure of the OD’s vetting process that is supposed to weed out corrupt officials. Finally, intense public outcry is always arousedby the scandals of buying and selling public offices. For example, a prefecture-level Party leader in Heilongjiang province reportedly received 23.85 million yuan as bribes between 1996 and 2002. In exchange, he sold offices under his control to as many as 260 officials.10

The statements by top CCP leaders reveal their recognition that the woes of the personnel system pose an alarming threat to the regime’s legitimacy.11 They also realize that corruption and nepotism must be contained by limiting the influence of the core Party leaders over the cadre selection process. Since the early 1990s, the CCP hastaken a variety of measures to restrain the exercise of personnel power through due process requirements, administrative oversight and intra-party democratic reforms. This study focuses on the last set of these measures, that is, the efforts to open up the selection process to more players within the Party. By expanding the rights of Party members to access information and participate in the political process, IPD not only dovetails with modern democratic ethos but may also inject bottom-up oversight over cadres as a way to improve their quality. It is therefore not surprising that top CCP leaders have expressed strong endorsement of IPD by callingit “the lifeblood of the Party”.12 This paper studies the implementation of two crucial ingredients of IPD: the

9 cpc.people.com.cn 2012. 10 “Ma De ‘wusha pifabu’ zhenjing Heilongjiang” (Ma De’s wholesale store of offices shocks Heilongjiang), Lianzheng Liaowang (Honest and Clean Government Perspectives), 2003 (12), 24-5. 11 See Zeng 2002, 45-6. 12 Li 2009, 2.

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practices of “democratic recommendation” and the semi-competitive elections at party congresses.

III. Democratic recommendation as a gateway to promotion The formal process of democratic recommendation

The post-Tiananmen era has seen the CCP making strenuous efforts to regularize the cadre selection processwith rules and procedures.13 According to the regulations promulgated in 2002, selecting a cadre for promotion consists of four basic steps: democratic recommendation, organizational vetting, deliberation and decision. AppendixI provides a brief summary of the statutory procedures withregard to cadre selection. In this process, democratic recommendation plays a gatekeeper’s role of generating the candidates entitled to enter the following stages. The regulations stipulate that the recommendation procedure should apply to two scenarios: the changeover of the leadership group (lingdao banzi huanjie 民民民民民民) and individual promotions (gebie tiba renzhi 民民民民民民). The former scenario refers to the periodic changeover of the Party committee’s leadership group at Party congresses, while the latter include promotions to individual vacant posts between two congresses. In both cases, the preliminary list of candidates must be generated through democratic recommendation.14

Among the four steps of cadre selection, democratic recommendation is arguably the one most relevant for realizing the core values of IPD such as participation,

13 In 1995, the CCP’s Central Committee promulgated provisional regulations to govern the promotion of party officials. In 2002, the regulations were revised into a permanent version with more procedural clarity. The CCP’s Central Committee. Provisional regulations on the selection and appointment of leading party and government cadres. (1995) Regulations on the selection and appointment of leading party and government cadres. (2002).

14 The 2002 regulations, Article 11.

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representation and inclusiveness.15 Designated to participate in the recommendation process are the followingpolitical elites: members of Party committees, governments and congress standing committees at the levels for which leaders are being selected; party and government leaders one level down; leaders in the courts, procuratorates, Party discipline inspection committees and mass organizations; and other members that the OD deems necessary to include.16 The OD of the next higher level willsolicit opinions from these participants through meetings and individual interviews. At the recommendation meeting, the participants will complete ballots to express their preferences. Based on the votes and individual interviews, the recommendation decision is then made jointly by the OD one level up and the standing committee at the levels for which leaders are being selected. The regulations stress that while the vote counts should be considered “one of themost important bases” for the decision, the practice of “deciding candidates through simple voting” (yi piao qu ren 民民民民) should be avoided.

Despite the CCP’s efforts to update its regulations andflesh out the operational details of the selection process,the general and sometimes vague statutory language still gives the implementing agencies substantial room for interpretation. Drawing on research conducted by Chinese scholars, the CCP’s internal circulars and reports and the author’s interviews, the following paragraphs examine how democratic recommendation is implemented on the ground, thevarious impediments to expanding participation during the process and the effects of this particular reform on the selection of CCP officials.

The implementation of democratic recommendation

A study by a former OD official provided a detailed account of the implementation of democratic recommendation prior to the 2003 changeover election in the districts and

15 He 2006, 195. 16 The 2002 regulations, Article 12.

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counties of the Shanghai Municipality.17 Because Shanghai isa provincial-level municipality, the leaders of the districts and counties (simply referred to as districts henceforth) within its jurisdiction are ranked at the prefecture level. Therefore, this description should be viewed as a case study of the operation of the recommendation procedure at the prefecture level.

In China’s political system, the periodic changeover oflocal leadership groups is a complex personnel project meticulously planned and implemented by the OD under the aegis of the Party committee. As the first step of the 2003changeover, the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee determined the number of posts in each district’s leadership group.18 The OD at the district level would then set out to prepare the following paperwork:

(1). The cadre roster. The roster was designed to provide the participants in the recommendation process withbasic information about the leading cadres in their jurisdictions. The names on the roster thus formed the poolof candidates to be recommended for the leadership group. The roster included the incumbent leaders of the district’sParty committee, government apparatus, people’s congress, courts, procuratorates, various functional departments and so forth. Biographical information such as a cadre’s age, date of joining the Party, educational background and current office were provided on the roster.

(2). List of recommendation meeting participants. Although the CCP’s propaganda touts democratic recommendation as a demonstration of the Party’s “mass line” policy, almost all participants were Party leaders intheir own right. Differentiated by their bureaucratic status, the participants largely fell into five groups: theincumbent leaders of the district’s Party and government apparatus; those who have retired from the district’s

17 Xu 2006. 18 For the Party apparatus, this includes the number of depute Party secretaries and standing committee members.

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leadership posts; the leaders of the district’s functional departments and mass organizations; the leaders of the various sub-district offices/townships; and the representatives of democratic satellite parties and non-communists. Xu’s study did not reveal the exact number of cadres that participated in the meeting. According to official report, an average of 230-odd cadres took part in the recommendation meetings at the prefecture level during the 2006-7 changeover period. The corresponding number for the provincial level was 570.19

(3). Recommendation forms. These forms would list all the vacant posts, and the participants should fill in a candidate’s name to match each of the available offices. Because the regulations stipulate that the ballots cast by officials with different bureaucratic ranks should be counted separately,20 the recommendation forms would be divided into five categories in correspondence to the five groups of participants discussed above.

After the Shanghai Municipal OD approved the relevant documents and forms, the recommendation meeting was ready to be held. At the meeting, a task force dispatched by the Municipal OD delivered an address to the participants, emphasizing various requirements regarding the size, age structure and gender quota of the incoming leadership group. The participants were then asked to complete the recommendation forms and place them in the ballot boxes. After the forms were collected, the task force sorted them by group, counted the votes among each group and summarizedthe results. The meeting was followed by the task force’s interviews with a selected group of main leaders at the district level. The average number of interviewees at the prefecture level during the 2006-7 national changeover was reportedly 140.21

The vote counts, together with the information gathered19 search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu 2007. 20 2002 regulations, Article 13.21 search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu 2007.

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from individual interviews, were reported both to the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and the Party secretaries at the district level. In light of this report,the standing committee of the district’s Party committee convened a meeting to determine the candidates to be vettedby the Shanghai Municipal OD. The list of candidates was finalized after consultation with and approval from the Municipal OD.

Impediments to political participation during the recommendation process

As an integral part of the CCP’s efforts to reform its problematic personnel system, democratic recommendation wasdesigned to expand Party members’ right to “assess information, participate, select and supervise” over the course of cadre promotion.22 The Party’s official eulogy notwithstanding, there are two major factors that restrict the influence of those cadres who are formally empowered toparticipate. The first factor is the ambiguous statutory language surrounding the role of recommendation votes. On the one hand, the number of votes received should be considered “one of the most important bases” for deciding the candidates to be vetted for the posts. On the other hand, as mentioned, the importance of votes is qualified bythe clause that “the practice of electing someone through simple voting should be avoided”. In part, this caveat reflects the genuine concern that candidates with the highest number of votes may not be most suitable for the posts. A comment made by an educational official with rich personnel management experience is representative of many Party leaders’ views:

The number of recommendation votes is very important, but weshould look at this issue from a scientific perspective… Some people might vote out of personal affection or resentment (instead of public interest)…In recent years, the climate of theofficialdom has nurtured many cadres who try to offend nobody, to build personal relations and to form their own inner circles.These people are more likely to win votes than cadres who are

22 Central Organization Department 2006, 184.

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not afraid to tackle hard problems and offend people… Therefore,my approach of dealing with the promotion of some cadres is that, as long as they received more than half of the votes, theyshould be eligible for closer vetting (even if someone else received more votes). 23

In practice, the ambiguous language gives the core Party leaders considerable discretion in applying voting results. When they nominate someone who has failed to receive the most votes, they could justify the decision by the need to adopt a holistic approach rather than “electingsomeone through simple voting”. Therefore, the insertion ofthe caveat clause diminishes the binding force of recommendation votes in favor of the will of core Party leaders. The latitude enjoyed by the Party leaders is reinforced by the secret nature of voting results. In actual operation, the number of votes received by each candidate is rarely announced to the voters.24 Should the vote counts be made public, the leaders will probably come under great pressure to respect the results and nominate the winner. The lack of transparency, however, means that no such pressure exists.25

Another major impediment to Party members’ participation in the selection process has to do with the frequent rotation of Party leaders across localities and functional departments. The primary goal of the rotation system is to enhance monitoring over local officials and prevent the development of local factions.26 The rotation ofcadres can take two forms: transfer via promotion (tiba jiaoliu民民民民) and transfer between positions of equal rank (pingji diaodong 民民民民). In both cases, the higher-up party committeedominates the transfer decision at the expense of bottom-up

23 Interview with a director of educational bureau at the prefecture level, Fujian, 26 Februray 2014. 24 Some localities have publicized the results “when the timing is proper and to a proper degree (shi shi shi du 民民民民)”. Central Organization Department2005, 128. 25 Deng 2012, 55-6.26 Eaton and Kostka 2014.

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participation from the affected units.

Transfer via promotion refers to the scenario where a cadre leaves his current unit to serve a higher-ranking position in a different unit. In this case, the Party leaders one level up always have clear intent as to which individual should be promoted. Although the standard procedure of recommendation still has to be performed, it is nothing more than a formality to confirm the higher-level leaders’ preference.27 Furthermore, since the recommendation procedure is always carried out in the cadre’s current unit,28 the participants are essentially nominating someone who will soon have no impact on their lives, while the members of the receiving unit have no say in selecting their new boss. In the case of transferring cadres between positions of equal rank, there is no procedural requirement for democratic recommendation.29

To assess the degree to which cadre rotation weakens Party member’s input in the appointment decision, we need to measure the proportion of total appointments that are made in the form of transfer. If the vast majority of majorappointments take the form of promotion within the affectedunit, a process in which recommendation has more substantive meaning, the negative impact of rotation on bottom-up participation should be regarded as moderate, andvice versa. To make this assessment, I coded all the appointments to the standing committee of the Provincial Party Committee (PSC) across China between 1997 and 2012.30 Figure 2 depicts the proportion of all appointments

27 Xu 2006, 17-8. 28 Interview with a deputy director of OD at the county level, 18 February2014. 29 For the procedure of transferring equal-raking officials, see: The CCP’s Central Committee. Provisional regulations on the transfer work of Party and state leading cadres. (1999) Article 4; Regulations on the transfer work of Party and state leadingcadres. (2006) Article 19.

30 The conclusions drawn from this data set concerns the provincial level only. Whether they can be generalized to other administrative levels should be investigated in future studies.

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accounted for by cross-provincial transfers as opposed to within-province promotions, with the black columns representing the percentage of transfers. As shown in the figure, the proportion of transfers is by no means negligible. On average, about 41 percent of all appointments in a given year are accounted for by transfersarranged by higher-level Party committees. This analysis provides strong evidence that the institution of cadre rotation indeed imposes substantial limits on bottom-up participation in the selection process.

(Figure 2 here)

The impact of democratic recommendation on cadre selection

The discussion above raises the question of whether democratic recommendation can play any role in wresting control from a handful of Party secretaries and redistributing power to lower-level Party members. Ideally,a researcher would like to collect a random sample of casesto examine the binding force of recommendation votes vis-à-vis the will of core Party leaders. Since the appointment process always operates behind a thick curtain of secrecy, such data is understandably difficult to obtain. Instead, Imake use of interview data, the CCP’s disciplinary measures, and internal policy debates to show that the process does have the effect of altering the dynamics of the selection process and shaping the behavior of the political actors.

One of the impacts of the voting process is to block the nomination of those highly unpopular candidates, however much the core Party leaders would want to pick them. Potential candidates who fail to pass a threshold, which varies from one third to half of the votes across localities, are usually eliminated from the process. My interviews confirm that this mandatory threshold is widely

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established across the country.31 In this sense, the recommendation process partly accomplishes its intended purpose of preventing the appointment of very disreputable but well-connected cadres.

Another way in which the recommendation votes might make a difference is when power is relatively diffused among the core Party leaders and no individual can dictate proceedings. For instance, after two districts were merged to create Beijing’s Dongcheng district in 2012, the Party secretary and head of government each represented the bureaucracy of one old district and possessed roughly equalpower. They therefore found it difficult to reach compromise on key appointment decisions. Situations like this, which previously would have been resolved through behind-the-scene maneuvers and horse-trading, tend to elevate the influence of the voting process as a way acceptable to both Party leaders to settle their differences.32

Democratic recommendation has affected not only how core Party leaders wield their personnel power but also howcadres pursue promotions. One example is the widespread practice of vote solicitation among candidates as revealed by the CCP’s disciplinary measures taken against such activities. The formal procedure provides almost no platform for the candidates to introduce themselves or articulate policy positions, and the Party’s discipline strictly prohibits campaign activities that are not closelymanaged by the OD. Despite the official ban, candidates have engaged in a variety of clandestine canvassing activities such as gift-giving, inviting the recommenders to dinners and sending text messages. Judging from the

31 Interview with a former deputy mayor, Fujian, 8 February 2014; interview with a deputy OD director at county level; interview with a former county Party secretary, Fujian, 19 February 2014; an OD official working at the county level, Chongqing, 13 March 2014; and an OD official working at the prefecture level, Beijing, 14 December 2014.32 Interview with an OD official working at the prefecture level, Beijing,14 December 2014.

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Party’s repeated warnings against vote solicitation and thehigh-profile disciplinary actions taken against the perpetrators, these activities are probably quite common. As the CCP prepares itself for the periodic changeover of leadership across the country, the Party center will typically issue a circular to remind its members that “it is necessary to resolutely investigate and punish those whoengage in buying votes through bribery and in other illegalactivities during the period of replacing old party committees with new ones, especially during the period of democratic recommendation and election”.33

In 2010, the Party publicized twelve typical cases of violating personnel rules and disciplines.34 Of these cases,three involved illicit canvassing during the process of democratic recommendation. For example, Li Weiqun, the then-secretary-general of Qiqihar Municipal Government, wasdismissed for soliciting recommendation votes when the Heilongjiang Provincial OD was selecting candidates to jointhe reserve list of prefecture-level leaders. In the space of four days, Li sent over 410 text messages to more than 180 cadres. The content of these messages ranged from “I intend to fight for the reserve list of the court president. Your support will be greatly appreciated” to “Devoted to prosecutorial work for 30 years. Among them, 11years as municipal deputy procurator-general. National senior prosecutor. Great reputation in the profession”.35 Although these campaign messages contained little more thana highlight of career achievements and requests of support,they are considered severe violation of Party discipline

33 Central Disciplinary Commission Circular on Election of Local Party

Committees. "Circular of CPC Central Committee's Central Discipline Inspection Commission and Organization Stresses It Is Necessary To Strengthen Organizational and Personnel Discipline When Local Party Committees Stand for Re-election When the Current Term Expires" -- Xinhua headline. Xinhua Domestic Service (provided by World News Connection) [Beijing, China] 19 May 2006.34 Gz.ahxf.gov.cn 2010. 35 Zzb.bjtu.edu.cn 2009.

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and, once discovered,36 can lead to a devastating blow for acadre’s political career.

That the recommendation votes started to exert influence on the selection process did not escape the attention of Party officials and intellectuals, many of whom criticized the practice of “electing someone through simple voting”. 37 The critics contended that many localities overly emphasized the importance of recommendation votes, inducing some cadres to perform theirdaily work with an eye towards attracting more votes. As a result, they had become “afraid to criticize people, offendpeople and lose votes”, while those cadres who were “conscientious and responsible in their work” and “can stick to principles” tended to be disadvantaged under the current system.38 It is worth noting that the analysts are criticizing existing practices rather than expressing opposition to hypothetical scenarios, although the sensitivity of the issue does not allow them to name specific cadre or location. Indeed, concerns about the excessive importance attached to votes led the Party centerto revise the statutory language regarding democratic recommendation in 2014.39 Instead of being “one of the most important bases” for deciding candidates, the results of recommendation are now defined as “important references” for selecting cadres.40

To sum up, despite significant institutional barriers 36 The CCP’s OD and disciplinary agency send teams of inspection to supervise the changeover of leadership across the country. These teams areresponsible for spotting and reporting any irregular activity during the changeover process. Interview with a deputy director of OD at the county level. 37 For example, see CCP’s Organizational Department in Guangan prefecture,Sichuan Province 2012; Huang 2004. 38 Xu 2008, 30. 39 Interview with a former deputy OD director at the prefecture level, Fujian, 18 February 2014; interview with a professor at Central Party School, Beijing, 10 March 2014. 40 The CCP’s Central Committee. Regulations on the selection and appointment of Party and government leading cadres. (2014)

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to the expansion of Party members’ participation, the introduction of democratic recommendation has brought new dynamics into the personnel system. The loopholes and inconsistencies in the formal institution may allow the core Party leaders to retain control over the appointment decision, but in most cases the voting process does serve as a firewall to block the nomination of highly unpopular candidates. The core leaders are also more likely to defer to the results of recommendation when they are divided among themselves. For ambitious cadres, it has become part of their office-seeking strategy to win the approval of colleagues during daily work and to solicit votes prior to the recommendation meeting. Combined with the ongoing complaints about the “undue influence” of recommendation votes in the CCP’s internal policy discussions, the evidence suggests that recommendation is much more than a legitimation procedure that rubber-stamps the decisions of core Party leaders.

As hinted in the Party’s injunction against bribery and“other illegal activities” amid leadership changeover, vote-seeking maneuvers are found not only at the stage of recommendation but also during the periodic intra-party elections to produce new leadership group at all levels. What are intra-party elections? How are they implemented inpractice? Does the electoral process have any effect on opening the selection process to a wider group of Party members? These questions will be addressed in the next section.

IV. Managed contestation in intra-party election

Similar to democratic recommendation, election is hailed by the CCP as an important institution for promotingintra-party democracy. According to the CCP’s Constitution,“(t)he Party's leading bodies at all levels are elected except for the representative organs dispatched by them andthe leading Party members' groups in non-Party

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organizations.”41 For the most part of the CCP’s history, intra-party elections were merely ritualistic proceedings designed to legitimize the personnel decisions made by higher-level Party leaders. However, with the idea of intra-party democracy gaining popularity amongst the CCP’s leaders and the introduction of semi-competitive elections in the 1980s, the role of intra-party elections in the political system was no longer negligible. This section will first delineate the electoral institutions that selectthe Party’s leadership groups. It then describes how the Party organizations use informal practices and formal rulesto minimize the constraints imposed by semi-competitive elections. Despite these formal and informal obstacles, I will show that limited contestation still manages to complicate the core Party leaders’ personnel authority by creating electoral uncertainties. For the convenience of discussion, I use the election of leadership groups at the provincial level – members of the CCP’s provincial standingcommittee (PSC) – as an illustration of the dynamics of theelectoral system.

Election of PSC members at provincial party congresses

According to the Party Constitution, members of the PSC–the top provincial decision-making body composed of 10-15 members – should be elected at the provincial party congress once in five years. To be precise, the PSC is selected through a bottom-up, progressive electoral processthat contains three tiers (Figure 3). At the lowest level, party organizations in various sub-provincial work units hold party conferences to elect their delegates to the

41 The Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party. Article 2. The CCP’s Constitutionwas amended at every National Party Congress (NPC). The phrase “the Party’s leading bodies at all levels are elected” has appeared in every version of the Constitution except for the versions passed at the 9th and 10th NPC, both held during the Cultural Revolution. In those two versions, it was stated that the Party’s leading bodies at all levels should be selected through “democratic consultation and election”, which in practicebecame synonymous with appointment by Party leaders of the next higher level. See Lin 2011, 546.

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provincial party congress. These work units represent a wide range of organized interests at the sub-provincial level recognized by the party-state. The total number of delegates may range from 400 to 800.42 The second-tier election takes place at the provincial party congress, where the delegates elect the members of the provincial party committee. Party regulations suggest that the size ofthe provincial party committee should vary from 50 to 80.43 At the top level, immediately after the conclusion of the provincial party congress, the newly elected provincial party committee holds a plenum to elect the PSC. It then elects the provincial party secretary and deputy party secretaries, all of whom must be chosen from the newly elected PSC members. (Figure 3 here)

During Mao’s reign, intra-party electoral procedures played a negligible role in the political process. These elections were conducted with the number of candidates equal to the number of seats. The lack of electoral competition meant that the candidate nominated for a post only needed to receive majority vote to be elected, a foregone conclusion under normal circumstances. Moreover, frequent political campaigns and turmoil made it impossibleto observe routine democratic procedures.44 With the passing of Mao, the CCP moved quickly to restore Party members’ democratic rights to prevent the excessive concentration of power that characterized the Maoera. In 1980, the Party adopted a decision on “Several Principles on Political Life in the Party” that, among other things, called for improvement in electoral procedureduring leadership selection. Most importantly, the documentendorsed for the first time the idea of the cha’e (民民)

42 The CCP’s Central Committee. Regulations governing CCP organization of local elections. (1994) Article 9. 43 The Central Organization Department. Provincial regulations on several specific questions regarding the Party’s local congress at various levels. (1995) Article 6. 44 Lin 2011.

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election, or an election in which there are more candidatesthan seats.45 At the 13th National Party Congress held in 1987, the Party Constitution was amended to make the cha’e method mandatory in intra-party elections. The plan to introduce electoral contestation was later fleshed out in specialized Party regulations. In 1990, the Central Committee promulgated the Provisional Regulations Governing Grassroots CCP Organizing Elections, which were formalized in January 1994 as the Regulations Governing CCPOrganization of Local Elections. The regulations applied the cha’e method to the election of local Party committees and their standing committees.46 More importantly, the regulations clarified the degree of contestation in local Party elections by specifying the ratio of candidates to seats. When congressional delegates elect the local Party committee, the candidates should exceed the size of the committee by 10 percent of the number of candidates.47 In the next step, when the local Party committee elects its standing committee, there should be one or two more candidates than seats (Figure 3).48

Admittedly, the amount of electoral competition guaranteed by formal institutions remains highly restricted. First of all, the minimum level of electoral contestation mandated by the regulations is extremely low, requiring only ten percent of the candidates for local Party committee and one to two candidates for the standing committee to lose the election. Moreover, the regulations exempt the Party secretary and deputy secretaries, the mostpowerful Party posts, from electoral contestation.49 Apart from these restrictive measures, the regulations are extremely vague with respect to how candidates are nominated. Although all nominees are required to go throughthe procedure of democratic recommendation, organizational vetting and deliberation as in the case of promoting

45 Niu 1999: 32; Lin 2011: 546. 46 Regulations governing CCP organization of local elections. Article 4.47 Ibid. Article 17. 48 Ibid. Article 20. 49 Ibid. Article 4.

21

individuals to leadership posts, the loosely-worded regulations grant sufficient discretion for the core Party leaders to control nomination one level down.

Mechanisms to minimize the constraints of electoral contestation

Subjecting candidates to semi-competitive election not only adds a veneer of democracy to China’s one-party rule but also forces Party committees at all levels to be more prudent in the selection of candidates. More careful scrutiny of the quality of candidates might help prevent the selection of highly unpopular, corrupt officials, reduce state-society tension and improve the status of the CCP as an organization.50 However, the CCP wants to have thecake and eat it too: that is, it wants to enjoy all the benefits associated with electoral procedure without relinquishing the authority to firmly control the selectionof leadership at lower levels. Therefore, months before theopening of the provincial party congress, the OD at the central level would work in tandem with its provincial counterparts to prepare a personnel plan to be realized at the congress. The plan slates specific individuals to be elected to the PSC; it also matches each of these individuals with a specific post traditionally held by a PSC member (provincial Party secretary, governor, head of the provincial OD, etc.).51 Once the personnel plan for the PSC is nailed down, theprovincial OD will be handed the task of ensuring the electoral success of the candidates designated by the center (the designated candidates henceforth). Ever since intra-party elections were held to select Party leaders, the CCP has developed a variety of informal practices with dubious legitimacy to shape the outcome of these elections.The discussion below focuses on two such practices: the nomination of “partner candidates” and informal campaigningon behalf of the designated candidates. One mechanism to control electoral contestation is for

50 Fewsmith 2006; Manion 2008.51 An 1994.

22

the Party committee to nominate sure losers to compete withthe designated candidates. Known as “partner candidates” (pei xuan ren, 民民民), these designated losers usually lack namerecognition and diverse career experience. Placing these weak candidates on the ballot is supposed to guarantee the election of the more well-known, senior designated candidates.52 In some localities, the delegates are explicitly informed of the identities of the partner candidates to avoid any confusion.53 After losing the election as planned, the partner candidates can expect a reward of some other kind. “You have sacrificed yourself for the Party organization. The next time a good position becomes vacant, you will be picked.”54 Some local Party committees use the low proportion of votes received by the partner candidates as an indicator of their organizational success. That the People’s Daily, the CCP’s principle mouthpiece, published an article denouncing the designationof partner candidates in local elections betrays the widespread, regularized nature of this practice.55 In case the nomination of weak rivals is not sufficient

to ensure the desirable outcome, the OD also resorts to informal campaigning on behalf of the designated candidates.56 In preparation for the party congress, the organizers of the congress often conduct opinion polls among the delegates to assess the challenges faced by the designated candidates. Based on this valuable information, the organizers will make use of multiple strategies to influence the views of individual voters: at the preparatory meeting for the party congress, the provincial Party secretary will make speeches to exhort the voters to “realize the intent of the Party organization”;57 the OD will also contact individual voters to change their

52 Lin 2011, 550. 53 Interview with a former deputy mayor. 54 Interview with an OD official at provincial level, Chongqing, 15 March 2014. 55 News.xinhuanet.com 2012. 56 Wu 2000. 57 Interview with a provincial official, Fujian, 12 February 2014.

23

preferences and vote for the designated candidates. In the final analysis, these informal measures are taken because the main provincial leaders face strong top-down pressure to ensure that the designated candidates get elected. Otherwise, “the party congress is a failure. The Party secretary will be regarded as lacking the ability to coordinate and lose the trust of higher-level leaders.”58

In addition to informal practices that skew the playingfield, the center can overcome the constraints of electoralinstitutions by making “recess appointments”. While the CCP’s Constitution stipulates that the Party’s leading bodies should all be elected, it also allows the Party center, when it “deems it necessary”, to transfer or appoint PSC members between provincial party congresses. Intheory, the power of recess appointment was designed to deal with a narrow set of contingencies such as the resignation of incumbent leaders due to health issues or corruption. Intuitively, the more frequently recess appointments are made, the less meaningful the electoral process becomes. Somewhat surprisingly, none of the existing studies has examined the percentage of Party leaders who come into office through congressional electionas opposed to through recess appointment. Using systematic data on the provincial level, the following analysis takes a first step to measure the relevance of Party congressional election for the turnover of leadership group.

Towards this end, the author has identified 855 cases of new PSC members taking office between 1997 and 2012.59 Figure 4 presents how these cases are distributed over the interval between two adjacent party congresses. In this graph, the tick “elected” on the X-axis indicates the cases

58 Interview with a former deputy mayor.59 This data set only includes the cases for which the month of taking office can be identified from the official CVs. Without this information, we cannot tell whether the new PSC member came into office through recess appointment or congressional election. The availability of this information seems to be random, so the results are not driven by any systematic difference between the selected and missing cases.

24

in which PSC members took office through election; “1st year” indicates the cases in which a PSC member is appointed during the 12-month interval after the Party congress; “2nd year” indicates the 12 months after that and so forth.60 As shown in the figure, only about 35 percent ofnew PSC assignments took the form of congressional election. Recess appointments account for the rest of the 855 cases, which were more or less evenly distributed between the recess periods. On this evidence alone, it can be concluded that recess appointment is by no means merely an emergency measure tailored for unpredictable contingencies. The large proportion of such appointments significantly erodes the substantive meaning of congressional election and the limited degree of contestation introduced.

(Figure 4 here)

Further inquiry reveals that recess appointment is mainly employed as a mechanism to facilitate cross-provincial transfer of officials. The 855 cases of PSC assignments are composed of 547 promotions from within the province and 308 transfers across provinces. As shown in Figure 5, over 95 percent of the 308 transfers were conducted through recess appointment, while the equivalent number is less than 50 percent for promotions within the same province. In other words, the five-year changeover cycle does have some relevance for the locally promoted cadres as the majority of them came into office at the party congress. For the transferred cadres, however, the election cycle is largely meaningless.

(Figure 5 here)

60 Before the 2001-2002 national changeover period, some provinces did notstrictly implement the Party Constitution’s provision that provincial party congress should be held once in five years. Some congresses were notheld until the 6th or 7th year after the previous congress. This explains why a small portion of PSC members were appointed in the 6th or 7th year.

25

One of the reasons most transfers were completed through recess appointment is to better prepare the rotatedcadres for the next congressional election. Because these cadres are outsiders without support base in the province, fielding them in the semi-competitive election carries significant risks. Lack of familiarity and the sentiment oflocalism may very well lead the delegates to vote against the outsiders. “In local elections,” according to Li Cheng,“people are highly likely to choose a native candidate to be their local leader if the other candidates’ qualifications are roughly equal”.61 Recess appointment not only bypasses the electoral procedure but also gives the outsiders time to build a local constituency for the upcoming election. During the period leading up to the nextparty congress, the outsider will be given opportunities tobuild a reputation of competence as well as a network of local support. The outsider’s status as a PSC incumbent with some working experiences in the province makes it easier for the organizers to conduct informal campaigning for him and secure his election. Interviews with local OD officials confirmed the importance of transferring officials well before the congress to hold the most critical positions in the Party committee:

More than a year before (the changeover), we will reshuffle the Party secretary, head of government, head of OD and head of Disciplinary Commission. These people will not be replaced at the changeover election. This is because they have to be transferred into positions first and take stock of the surroundings. They have to get the situation under control, otherwise problems will occur at the changeover…Those positions that go through turnovers at changeover election are not what weconsider core positions, because there are many uncertainties at the changeover. 62

Thus, much like what happens with democratic recommendation, bottom-up participation in the congressional election is tightly managed and impeded by

61 Li 2004, 52. 62 Interview with OD official at the provincial level.

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informal measures as well as the formal power of recess appointment. In spite of these impediments, the very existence of semi-competitive elections creates an element of uncertainty that complicates the core Party leaders’ personnel authority. In the absence of systematic election data, the following analysis studies a few cases to probe the patterns of electoral uncertainties.

Electoral uncertainties at provincial party congresses

Since the adoption of the cha’e method in the 1980s, “democratic accident” (minzhu shigu 民民民民), a sarcastic term used by political insiders to describe the electoral defeats of designated candidates, has occurred from time totime. Due to the extreme sensitivity of election results, the Chinese authorities do not publicize systematic data about the candidates and the votes they received.63 Fortunately, sources such as the Chinese press, western publications and Internet blogs revealed a number of cases in which designated candidates for the PSC suffered unexpected electoral defeats. These cases offer a tantalizing glimpse of how the center’s personnel plans maybe thwarted by the electoral processes that the Party itself has created.

For example, one of the earliest and most high profile victims of cha’e elections was Chen Yuan, son of Chen Yun who served as one of China’s most influential leaders during the 1980s.64 Chen Yuan’s prominent family background led to his speedy ascent to high-level positions in the Municipality of Beijing. Before Beijing’s 6th Party Congressto be held in 1987, the central OD had slated Chen to be the deputy Party secretary of Beijing. To get this job, Chen first needed to be elected a member of the Beijing’s Party committee. At the Congress, 750 delegates were given

63 Even if such data were available, an outsider lacking knowledge of the list of designated candidates would still be unable to ascertain whether the electoral results have deviated from the center’s plan. 64 The account of Chen’s electoral loss is based on He and Gao 1996, 179-89.

27

the task of choosing by secret ballot 50 people to serve onBeijing’s Party committee from a list of 55 candidates. Unexpectedly, Chen was among the five people who lost. The electoral loss dealt a heavy blow to Chen’s political ambition. The rest of Chen’s career was mainly spent in thestate-owned banking sector.

Table 1 provides a summary of the eight cases identified from various sources in which designated candidates suffered electoral defeats. It must be stressed that these cases were selected based on the availability ofinformation instead of a rigorous sampling procedure. With this caveat in mind, three important facts can still be learned from the table. First, the phenomenon of intra-party elections thwarting “the intent of the organization” seems to have persisted since the introduction of the cha’e election in 1987: two of these cases occurred in the 1980s,another two in the 1990s and four in the 2000s. Thus, although the Party has adopted a variety of measures to avoid unexpected electoral results, they cannot make the election of designated candidates a sure bet.

(Table 1 here)

Second, candidates for the PSC faced two electoral roadblocks: three cases saw the candidates failing to get elected as members of the provincial party committee, and in the remaining five cases they lost in the PSC election. Third, five out of the eight lost candidates were rotated officials who had worked for an average of four years in the province when the election took place. This is consistent with the observation that “democratic accidents”were typically an expression of local cadres’ distrust of outsiders. The electoral loss of a designated candidate, especially someone transferred from another province, represents a serious disruption of the center’s overall personnel plan and requires significant workload for the ODto cope with the aftermath.65 Because the CCP treats

65 In October 2001, for example, Li Jinzao was unexpectedly elected to the

28

personnel affairs across the country as “a single chessboard” (quan guo yi pan qi, 民民一民民) in which one wrong move will endanger the entire game, unexpected results must be avoided at all costs. As a local OD official explained:

These rotated officials constitute a giant chessboard in ourcity. The same thing is true on the national level. For example,if there are 1000 (rotated) officials, we must make sure that they get elected so that 1000 positions are filled. If one losesthe election and another person that comes from nowhere gets elected, then we have one redundant person. If all the posts in the leadership groups are already occupied, then there is nothing we can do, and the entire chess game is disrupted…so we have to ensure that rotated officials get elected. This is one of the things that we have to guarantee when we supervise the changeover.66

V. Discussion and conclusion

This paper has examined two critical components of the CCP’s ongoing reform within its personnel management system. Ostensibly, both democratic recommendation and semi-competitive election were inaugurated to enhance Partymembers’ stake and participation in the political process. On a more practical level, these measures were designed to break up the core Party leaders’ monopoly over personnel decisions that fuels corruption and social tension. This study has identified several key factors in the implementation stage that impede meaningful participation

PSC of Guangxi province at the expense of an incumbent PSC member, Wang Hanmin. The provincial OD was utterly unprepared for the election of Li, who was at that point serving as the number two leader (the mayor) of Guilin City. The CCP’s organizational procedures have it that only the number one leader (the Party secretary) of an important city may enter thePSC. To resolve the personnel chaos in the wake of Li’s election, the Party secretary of Guilin City had to be transferred to lead the provincial department of united front, vacating his post for Li to fill in.

66 Interview with an OD official at the provincial level.

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by the Party’s rank and file. In the case of recommendation, the ambiguous status assigned to recommendation votes, coupled with their secret nature, allowed the will of core Party leaders to supersede the voting results. For Party congressional elections, competitiveness was dampened by informal practices that skewed the playing field in favor of candidates designated by higher-level Party leaders. In both cases, the substantive meaning of participatory institutions was compromised by frequent rotation of officials across administrative boundaries.

However, the presence of these impediments does not mean that IPD procedures are merely political smokescreens with zero impact on the selection process. The evidence gathered by this research suggests that the votes received during the recommendation stage now exert non-negligible influence on the appointment decisions. Candidates who are flagrantly unpopular among their colleagues will face an uphill battle to survive the recommendation and electoral process. Sensing the importance of these new institutions, ambitious cadres have begun to adjust their everyday behavior and campaign secretly to attract more votes. For the core Party leaders, the exercise of their nomenklatura authority is placed under increasing institutional constraints. To get their preferred candidates appointed, the Party leaders have to micro-manage every step of a prolonged selection process and coordinate the decisions ofnumerous political actors. In trying to control the personnel outcome, they may have to bend recommendation results and conduct electoral fraud, actions that border onviolation of Party discipline and can be used by political opponents in the future. Considering the scarcity of political resources and the risks involved, it is not clearthat the core Party leaders will always want to exercise unlimited control over cadre selection.

If allowed to develop their full potential, the IPD institutions will have far-reaching implications for the resilience of one-party regime in China. First, IPD

30

institutions improve the regime’s legitimacy by cloaking the personnel system with rules, steps and procedures. To the extent that cadres and the general public view personnel decisions as resulting from a wide range of impersonal, impartial factors beyond any individual’s control, the distribution of political opportunities is less likely to breed resentment and discontent. Second, opening up the selection process to more players forces Party leaders to gather more information about the candidates, increasing the chances that unpopular candidates are weeded out and high-quality leaders are promoted. Third, the IPD procedures trap ambitious cadres to invest themselves in the existing institutions instead of pursuing offices outside of officially sanctioned channels. Previously, upward mobility was restricted to those who are well-connected to the core Party leaders. TheIPD institutions provide a corridor to promotion for a wider group of cadres who will solicit the support of “the enfranchised” as an alternative path to political success. Finally, as the recommendation example demonstrates, IPD could provide an institutional mechanism for rivaling factions to reach compromises over personnel decisions. This observation is consistent with Svolik’s insight that formal institutions contribute to authoritarian stability by facilitating more transparent, credible power-sharing.67

Despite these potential benefits, intra-party democracycan only operate within the straitjacket of the Party’s hierarchical control. Thus, when the CCP leadership observed that recommendation votes had become sufficiently important to “hijack” the selection process in certain localities, it released a new personnel regulation in 2014 to downplay the salience of votes and stress the principle that “the Party controls the cadres (dang guan gan bu 民民民民)”.68 Such regressive moves, however, do not diminish the valueof studying IPD measures. The swings of the political pendulum lay bare the different views that CCP leaders hold

67 Svolik 2012. 68 News.163.com, 2014.

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on the direction of reform. Intra-party democracy was closely identified with the Hu-Wen administration, creatingthe impression that those who favored “more competitive elections within the political establishment… (controlled) the platform and agenda of the CCP”.69 The Party’s new leader Xi Jinping, by contrast, has emphasized centralized control at the expense of broader participation. The expansion and contraction of democratic procedures indicatethe balance of power between the conservative and liberal forces within the Party, and raises the question of what explains the political cycle. Even in its heyday, however, intra-party democracy is unlikely to consolidate rule-boundcompetition for Party offices and extend participation to other strata of the society, as some scholars have hoped.

Figure 1: Personnel system of the CCP

69 Li 2009, 1.

A: core Party leaders

C. heads of functional departments

D. core Party leaders one level down

B. Organization Department

32

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 20120%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%100%

Figure 2: The proportion of PSC appointments accounted for by cross-

provincial transfers: 1997-2012Th

e pe

rcen

tage

of

tran

sfer

s

Sources: the author’s dataset. Available upon request.

33

34

010

2030

4050

Percent

elected 1st year 2nd year 3rd year 4th year 5th year 6th year 7th yeartim ing of appointm ent in relation to party congress

Sources: the author's dataset. Available upon request.

1997-2012, n=855Figure 4: The distribution of PSC appointm ents between two party congresses

35

010

2030

4050

elected 1st year 2nd year 3rd year 4th year 5th year 6th year 7th year elected 1st year 2nd year 3rd year 4th year 5th year 6th year 7th year

prom otion from within province (n=547) transferred from outside (n=308))

Percent

tim ing of appointm ent in relation to party congressSources: the author's dataset. Available upon request.

1997-2012; n=855Figure 5: distribution of PSC appointm ents between two party congresses

36

Table 1 Electoral defeats of designated PSC candidates

Centrally designatedcandidate

Timing of the election

provincialparty congress

Election lost Slated post

Career background of the candidate

The candidateelected instead

Chen Yuan(民民)

December 1987

Beijing's 6th Party congress

provincial party committee

deputy party secretary

outsider unknown

Song Ruixiang( 民民宋)

May 1988

Qinghai's 7th Party congress

provincial party committee

governor outsider unknown

Liu Hongren

(民民民)

Nov 1993

Shandong's6th Party congress

PSC unknown localist Han Yuqun(民民民)

Hou Wujie(民民民)

1995 Shanxi's PSC special election

PSC head of propaganda department

localist unknown

Wang Hanmin(民民民)

Oct 2001

Guangxi's 8th Party congress

PSC unknown outsider Li Jinzao(民民民)

Jiang Xiaoyu(民民民)

May 2002

Beijing's 9th Party congress

PSC head of propaganda department

localist Sun Zhengcai(民民民)

Bao Kexin(民民民)

April 2007

Guizhou's 10th Partycongress

provincial party committee

deputy governor

outsider Shen Yiqin(民民民)

Bayinchaolu(民民民民)

May 2012

Jilin's 10th Partycongress

PSC deputy party secretary

outsider Zhuang Yan(民民)

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Sources: For the Chen Yuan case, see He and Gao 1996, 179-89; for theSong Ruixiang, Jiang Xiaoyu and Bao Kexin cases, see blog.sina.com.cn2013; for the Liu Hongren case, see blog.sina.com.cn 2014; for the Hou Wujie case, see news.sohu.com 2006; for the Wang Hanmin case, seeblog.163.com 2009; for the Bayinchaolu case, see www.eeo.com.cn 2013.Note: Admittedly, the authenticity of information provided by Internet blogs is more questionable than in the case of print media. This concern can be somewhat eased by the fact that I only collect information from the largest blog space providers in China such as sina.com and 163.com. Whenever possible, I corroborate this information with the published CVs of the officials involved as well as official press coverage of the party congresses.

Appendix I: The formal process of selecting CCP officials

According to the CCP’s regulations, selecting a cadre for promotion consists of four basic steps: democratic recommendation, organizational vetting, deliberation and decision. First, the OD of the next higher level will decide on the pool of candidates to be vetted for the post.This decision should be made through extensive consultationwith a wide range of officials and colleagues at different levels. Next, the OD will dispatch a vetting team to gatherinformation about the candidates generated by the recommendation procedure. To do this, the vetting team may hold private meetings with relevant individuals, conduct opinion polls or interview the candidates. The vetting teamwill report the results to the OD, which will in turn report to the party committee one level up.

Third, before the names are presented to the higher-up party committee, the list of candidates must be vetted through a process of deliberation. The participants of the deliberation include the leaders of the party committee,

38

the legislature and the government apparatus. Finally, the higher-up party committee shall hold collective discussionsto decide whether a candidate should be promoted to the post. The CCP Constitution delegates the day-to-day duties of the party committee to a smaller standing committee; therefore, the appointment is in fact decided in the meetings of the standing committee. At the meeting, a leader from the OD introduces the candidate in light of theinformation gathered from the first three stages. The standing committee members would then deliberate before taking a simple majority vote to decide on the promotion.

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